Quotes About Tests and Hardship

“Every one of us is tested in different ways. For some of us, it might be the excess of wealth, for others, the lack of wealth. For some, it might be in the avoidance of alcohol, for other, guarding one's tongue from speaking evil.

Never feel superior to someone struggling with one test, because for sure, you are struggling with another.

“If it wasn't for the hardships of life the servant would have been afflicted by arrogance, self-worship, Pharoanic self-aggrandizement, and the hardness of the heart, which would have caused him to perish sooner or later.

“So often we think that Allah only tests us with hardships, but this isn’t true. Allah also tests with ease. He tests us with na`im (blessings) and with the things we love, and it is often in these tests that so many of us fail. We fail because when Allah gives us these blessings, we unwittingly turn them into false idols in the heart.

“On the surface, on the surface only...suffering and the unknown seem to press the mind to look for a refuge, a consolation. This is the logic our reason proposes when it looks on the human being on the outside of its nature. The Islamic tradition says exactly the opposite: the ordeals of life, sadness, encountering the death of those we love, for example, take the human being back to its most natural state, to its most essential longing. Consciousness of limitation brings it back to the need for the Transcendent, to the need for meaning.

“Fitan (trials) will be presented to hearts, as a reed mat is interwoven: stick by stick. Any heart which absorbs these trials will have a black mark put in it. However, any heart that rejects them will have a white mark put in it. The result is that hearts will be of two kinds: one white like a white stone, which will not be harmed by trials as long as the heavens and earth endure; and the other dark and rusty, like an over-turned vessel; not able to recognize the good, nor reject evil, but rather being absorbed with its desires.